Tabelle
New member
- Joined
- Mar 22, 2026
- Messages
- 5
Age 899
The manifest said four crates of drill bits and two replacement filters for a water recycler, which meant Tabelle had been in the GPM courtyard for the better part of twenty minutes, checking serial numbers against the delivery order while the afternoon sky sagged low and grey over the compound. The yard smelled like diesel and mineral dust and the industrial soap they used to hose down the trucks at the end of a shift. Good stop, this one. The guys on the loading dock always let her use their freight scale instead of estimating by hand, and the older woman in receiving, Marta, kept a tin of cookies on her desk that she opened for anyone who walked through the door looking even slightly tired.
The last crate had a smeared label. Tabelle was crouching beside it, running her thumb across the ink to see if any of the serial number was still legible, when the wall of the building in front of her stopped being a wall.
No warning. No sound first. One moment there was brick and concrete and the low electrical hum of a working warehouse, and the next moment a column of light, deep red, almost black at the edges, punched through the facade and kept going, carving a trench in the courtyard concrete that sent heat washing over her face and arms like opening a kiln door. Tabelle dropped flat on instinct, the way you drop when a load shifts on a hauler, hands over her head, cheek against the ground, grit pressing into her skin. Debris came down around her. Chunks of brick. Dust so thick she could taste it, chalky and hot at the back of her throat.
The dust was still settling when she got up. Couldn't not.
Through the hole in the wall a man came flying. Actually flying, his whole body wrapped in red light that crackled and popped against the air like something alive and furious. Tabelle recognized him without knowing his name, the boss of this place, dark hair, lean build, always in that white shirt and red sash when she caught a glimpse through the office window on other deliveries. He hovered above the courtyard for a moment, burning red against the grey, and his eyes found her.
"Leave! Now!" he shouted.
Her fingers were still curled around the smeared label. She could feel her own heartbeat in her palms, in the pads of her thumbs, that hard urgent rhythm that meant something very bad was happening and her body knew it before the rest of her caught up.
"Is anyone still inside?" she called back, and her voice came out steadier than the rest of her, which was something.
"Just go!" He didn't wait for her to argue. The red light flared brighter and he shot upward, northeast toward the city center, and then he was a streak against the clouds and then he was nothing.
The courtyard went quiet. Not quiet. The ringing took that word away. But the man was gone, and Tabelle stood alone with the freight manifest crumpling in her fist and the smell of scorched concrete baking up from the trench he'd carved through the yard.
Then something moved inside the building.
A shape came through the hole in the wall. Small, shorter than her by a good margin. Red-orange skin, dark armor, a crest of something smooth and hard where hair should have been. It walked the way people walk through their own house, unhurried, easy, like the smoldering wreckage around it was just the hallway between the bedroom and the kitchen. Its eyes, dark and flat, swept across the courtyard and across Tabelle and kept going. The way you look past a parked truck on the way to the one you actually need.
It didn't speak to her. Didn't slow down. Didn't register that there was a person standing six feet away with dust in her hair and brick grit on her cheek and her whole chest hammering.
Then it lifted off the ground, smooth as water running uphill, and followed the red streak into the sky. The courtyard dust swirled once beneath it and went still.
Tabelle stood there. The manifest crumpled tighter in her fist. Somewhere deeper in the compound, alarms started, that flat industrial tone that meant something structural had failed. Through the hole in the wall a light fixture swung from a single wire, and past it she could see a corridor filling with smoke and hear voices, confused ones, people calling out names.
She went inside.
It wasn't the brave thing. She didn't have a word for what it was. Someone needed to check, and she was already here, and leaving when you're already here felt worse than anything inside that building was going to feel.
Months later, and the courtyard didn't have a trench in it anymore.
Tabelle noticed that on her way in, the way she always noticed what had changed since the last visit. Fresh concrete where the blast had carved its path, paler than the old stuff and still curing at the edges. New brick along the warehouse wall, not quite the same color as the original but close enough that you'd have to know where to look. The tarps were gone. The light fixtures inside worked again. Marta's cookie tin was back on her desk, and the loading dock guys had stopped flinching at loud noises, mostly.
GPM was almost whole. Whole enough to work, anyway, which on Earth amounted to the same thing.
The coffee shop two blocks from the compound had become a habit. First time was three days after the attack, Tabelle showing up with her number written on a slip of paper and too many questions for a girl who drove freight. Buck hadn't known what to make of her. He'd called back mostly because she'd asked three times and he was too tired to keep saying no. That first conversation had been careful, him studying her across the table while she asked about offworld shipments and engine types and who handled cargo clearances at the Interstellar Market, and him not quite deciding whether she was a reporter or a spy or just strange in a way he couldn't place.
The second time was easier. The third, Buck ordered for her without asking, because he'd already learned she drank whatever the house blend was and didn't complain about it being burnt. By the fourth there was no pretense left. Tabelle was just someone who showed up, the way rain showed up in the wet season, and eventually you stopped carrying an umbrella and let it happen.
Now they had a booth. The window one, with the view of the compound and the terrible draft that came through the seal every time the front door opened. Buck sat across from her with his sleeves rolled up and his second cup already half gone, and Tabelle had her hands wrapped around her own, thumbs tracing the rim the way they always did when the rest of her was being patient. The conversation had wandered this morning, the good kind of wandering, route conditions on the eastern highways and a procurement contract GPM had just landed and the new kid on the loading dock who kept miscounting crates and blaming the freight scale.
Buck had laughed at that one, the real kind that shook his shoulders and made him set his cup down so he wouldn't spill. Good sound. He laughed more now than he had in those first weeks, when the color was still coming back to his face and every conversation circled back to the afternoon his office wall came apart.
Then he set the cup down again, and the way he did it was different. Careful. Both hands flat on the table afterward, like he was steadying something that wasn't the cup.
"So," Buck said. "I've got something."
Tabelle's thumbs stopped on the rim.
"I got in touch with the boss."
The words landed plain, the way Buck said most things, but his eyes stayed on her face in a way that meant he knew what they carried. The boss. The man wrapped in red light who had shouted at her to run, who had torn a hole through his own building to draw that creature away from his people and then vanished northeast into a grey sky. Months of nothing after that. Tabelle had asked about him in the early weeks, carefully at first and then less carefully and then not at all when it became clear Buck didn't know either.
"He's offworld," Buck said. "Has been since that day. Won't tell me everything, and I don't think he plans to, but he's alive." The careful hands on the table relaxed a fraction. "Asked about the company. Asked about the staff. Whether we'd kept things running."
A pause. Buck's mouth moved toward something that wasn't quite a smile yet.
"Told him we had. Told him about you, too."
Tabelle's fingers tightened around the cup.
"Told him about the freight girl who was in the courtyard when it happened and walked inside instead of running. Told him she'd been showing up ever since, asking smart questions about routes and engines and offworld cargo, helping with inventory when we were shorthanded, and generally making herself impossible to get rid of." The not-quite-smile finished arriving. "He wants to talk to you."
From his jacket pocket Buck produced something and set it on the table between their cups. Small, green-tinted glass on a curved metal frame, built to hook over an ear. A scouter. Tabelle had seen them in trade catalogs and once on an offworld merchant passing through the eastern district, but never this close. This one was old, the casing scuffed and smoothed at the edges from years of handling, and the glass had a faint warmth to it that might have been from Buck's pocket or might have been something else entirely.
"He's on the other end of this whenever you're ready," Buck said, and tapped the frame with one finger. "Told me to tell you he remembers the girl in the courtyard."
Tabelle looked at the scouter on the table. Then at Buck. Then at the scouter again, and her hands left the coffee cup and reached for it the way they reached for everything, turning it over, feeling the weight, the ridge where the earpiece hinged, the smooth face of the glass that caught the morning light coming through the window and threw it back green.
Her coffee was getting cold. The draft from the door came through again, ruffling the napkins in the dispenser. Outside in the GPM lot, a truck was backing up with that steady warning beep that meant the day was moving whether anyone was ready or not.
She fitted the scouter over her left ear.
"How do I..."
"Red button, on the side," Buck said.
Her thumb found it. Small, slightly raised, still warm.
She pressed it.
The manifest said four crates of drill bits and two replacement filters for a water recycler, which meant Tabelle had been in the GPM courtyard for the better part of twenty minutes, checking serial numbers against the delivery order while the afternoon sky sagged low and grey over the compound. The yard smelled like diesel and mineral dust and the industrial soap they used to hose down the trucks at the end of a shift. Good stop, this one. The guys on the loading dock always let her use their freight scale instead of estimating by hand, and the older woman in receiving, Marta, kept a tin of cookies on her desk that she opened for anyone who walked through the door looking even slightly tired.
The last crate had a smeared label. Tabelle was crouching beside it, running her thumb across the ink to see if any of the serial number was still legible, when the wall of the building in front of her stopped being a wall.
No warning. No sound first. One moment there was brick and concrete and the low electrical hum of a working warehouse, and the next moment a column of light, deep red, almost black at the edges, punched through the facade and kept going, carving a trench in the courtyard concrete that sent heat washing over her face and arms like opening a kiln door. Tabelle dropped flat on instinct, the way you drop when a load shifts on a hauler, hands over her head, cheek against the ground, grit pressing into her skin. Debris came down around her. Chunks of brick. Dust so thick she could taste it, chalky and hot at the back of her throat.
The dust was still settling when she got up. Couldn't not.
Through the hole in the wall a man came flying. Actually flying, his whole body wrapped in red light that crackled and popped against the air like something alive and furious. Tabelle recognized him without knowing his name, the boss of this place, dark hair, lean build, always in that white shirt and red sash when she caught a glimpse through the office window on other deliveries. He hovered above the courtyard for a moment, burning red against the grey, and his eyes found her.
"Leave! Now!" he shouted.
Her fingers were still curled around the smeared label. She could feel her own heartbeat in her palms, in the pads of her thumbs, that hard urgent rhythm that meant something very bad was happening and her body knew it before the rest of her caught up.
"Is anyone still inside?" she called back, and her voice came out steadier than the rest of her, which was something.
"Just go!" He didn't wait for her to argue. The red light flared brighter and he shot upward, northeast toward the city center, and then he was a streak against the clouds and then he was nothing.
The courtyard went quiet. Not quiet. The ringing took that word away. But the man was gone, and Tabelle stood alone with the freight manifest crumpling in her fist and the smell of scorched concrete baking up from the trench he'd carved through the yard.
Then something moved inside the building.
A shape came through the hole in the wall. Small, shorter than her by a good margin. Red-orange skin, dark armor, a crest of something smooth and hard where hair should have been. It walked the way people walk through their own house, unhurried, easy, like the smoldering wreckage around it was just the hallway between the bedroom and the kitchen. Its eyes, dark and flat, swept across the courtyard and across Tabelle and kept going. The way you look past a parked truck on the way to the one you actually need.
It didn't speak to her. Didn't slow down. Didn't register that there was a person standing six feet away with dust in her hair and brick grit on her cheek and her whole chest hammering.
Then it lifted off the ground, smooth as water running uphill, and followed the red streak into the sky. The courtyard dust swirled once beneath it and went still.
Tabelle stood there. The manifest crumpled tighter in her fist. Somewhere deeper in the compound, alarms started, that flat industrial tone that meant something structural had failed. Through the hole in the wall a light fixture swung from a single wire, and past it she could see a corridor filling with smoke and hear voices, confused ones, people calling out names.
She went inside.
It wasn't the brave thing. She didn't have a word for what it was. Someone needed to check, and she was already here, and leaving when you're already here felt worse than anything inside that building was going to feel.
Months later, and the courtyard didn't have a trench in it anymore.
Tabelle noticed that on her way in, the way she always noticed what had changed since the last visit. Fresh concrete where the blast had carved its path, paler than the old stuff and still curing at the edges. New brick along the warehouse wall, not quite the same color as the original but close enough that you'd have to know where to look. The tarps were gone. The light fixtures inside worked again. Marta's cookie tin was back on her desk, and the loading dock guys had stopped flinching at loud noises, mostly.
GPM was almost whole. Whole enough to work, anyway, which on Earth amounted to the same thing.
The coffee shop two blocks from the compound had become a habit. First time was three days after the attack, Tabelle showing up with her number written on a slip of paper and too many questions for a girl who drove freight. Buck hadn't known what to make of her. He'd called back mostly because she'd asked three times and he was too tired to keep saying no. That first conversation had been careful, him studying her across the table while she asked about offworld shipments and engine types and who handled cargo clearances at the Interstellar Market, and him not quite deciding whether she was a reporter or a spy or just strange in a way he couldn't place.
The second time was easier. The third, Buck ordered for her without asking, because he'd already learned she drank whatever the house blend was and didn't complain about it being burnt. By the fourth there was no pretense left. Tabelle was just someone who showed up, the way rain showed up in the wet season, and eventually you stopped carrying an umbrella and let it happen.
Now they had a booth. The window one, with the view of the compound and the terrible draft that came through the seal every time the front door opened. Buck sat across from her with his sleeves rolled up and his second cup already half gone, and Tabelle had her hands wrapped around her own, thumbs tracing the rim the way they always did when the rest of her was being patient. The conversation had wandered this morning, the good kind of wandering, route conditions on the eastern highways and a procurement contract GPM had just landed and the new kid on the loading dock who kept miscounting crates and blaming the freight scale.
Buck had laughed at that one, the real kind that shook his shoulders and made him set his cup down so he wouldn't spill. Good sound. He laughed more now than he had in those first weeks, when the color was still coming back to his face and every conversation circled back to the afternoon his office wall came apart.
Then he set the cup down again, and the way he did it was different. Careful. Both hands flat on the table afterward, like he was steadying something that wasn't the cup.
"So," Buck said. "I've got something."
Tabelle's thumbs stopped on the rim.
"I got in touch with the boss."
The words landed plain, the way Buck said most things, but his eyes stayed on her face in a way that meant he knew what they carried. The boss. The man wrapped in red light who had shouted at her to run, who had torn a hole through his own building to draw that creature away from his people and then vanished northeast into a grey sky. Months of nothing after that. Tabelle had asked about him in the early weeks, carefully at first and then less carefully and then not at all when it became clear Buck didn't know either.
"He's offworld," Buck said. "Has been since that day. Won't tell me everything, and I don't think he plans to, but he's alive." The careful hands on the table relaxed a fraction. "Asked about the company. Asked about the staff. Whether we'd kept things running."
A pause. Buck's mouth moved toward something that wasn't quite a smile yet.
"Told him we had. Told him about you, too."
Tabelle's fingers tightened around the cup.
"Told him about the freight girl who was in the courtyard when it happened and walked inside instead of running. Told him she'd been showing up ever since, asking smart questions about routes and engines and offworld cargo, helping with inventory when we were shorthanded, and generally making herself impossible to get rid of." The not-quite-smile finished arriving. "He wants to talk to you."
From his jacket pocket Buck produced something and set it on the table between their cups. Small, green-tinted glass on a curved metal frame, built to hook over an ear. A scouter. Tabelle had seen them in trade catalogs and once on an offworld merchant passing through the eastern district, but never this close. This one was old, the casing scuffed and smoothed at the edges from years of handling, and the glass had a faint warmth to it that might have been from Buck's pocket or might have been something else entirely.
"He's on the other end of this whenever you're ready," Buck said, and tapped the frame with one finger. "Told me to tell you he remembers the girl in the courtyard."
Tabelle looked at the scouter on the table. Then at Buck. Then at the scouter again, and her hands left the coffee cup and reached for it the way they reached for everything, turning it over, feeling the weight, the ridge where the earpiece hinged, the smooth face of the glass that caught the morning light coming through the window and threw it back green.
Her coffee was getting cold. The draft from the door came through again, ruffling the napkins in the dispenser. Outside in the GPM lot, a truck was backing up with that steady warning beep that meant the day was moving whether anyone was ready or not.
She fitted the scouter over her left ear.
"How do I..."
"Red button, on the side," Buck said.
Her thumb found it. Small, slightly raised, still warm.
She pressed it.
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